Using HubSpot’s Smart CTAs to Create a Personalized Web Experience

In this age of smartphones, social media, live video, and connected devices, it may seem that people’s attention spans are at an all time low, but there’s a good reason for that. Every day, we are constantly being fed information from multiple sources, with each of them vying for our attention. If you’re trying to reach an audience, how do you stand out in this sea of noise?

One way to make your voice heard is through personalized content. With content that provides a customized experience for users becoming easier to create, it has almost become something that visitors expect to see. In fact, “Nearly three-fourths (74%) of online consumers get frustrated with websites when content (e.g., offers, ads, promotions) appears that has nothing to do with their interests.” (source: Janrain)

Personalization allows you to show your website visitors content that pertains to them and display new content instead of something they have already seen before. When used properly, this can create a more engaging conversation with frequent visitors, but it should be used very carefully.

Defining Parameters for Smart CTAs

HubSpot allows two different categories of smart parameters when using their Smart CTA tool. The two categories include anonymous visitor options, which apply to visitors that are not currently in your contact database, and known contacts, visitors for which you already have a database record.

Some of the parameters to choose from when creating smart CTAs in HubSpot include:

For anonymous visitors:

Country

Device type

Referral source

Preferred Language

For current contacts:

Contact list membership

Lifecycle stage

As you can see from these options, there are many possibilities available for determining who will see your Smart CTAs, providing a wide variety of use cases for this powerful tool. Let’s look at how to actually create a smart CTA on a HubSpot page:

Creating Smart CTAs

Navigate to the Calls to action tool in HubSpot:

Click the blue “Create a CTA” button on the top right and select “Create Smart CTA”:

Then, you will specify who will see the smart CTA you will be creating:

Note: the top four parameters are pretty broad, so in order to create a CTA that targets a more specific audience, you can simply create a HubSpot list (either a smart list or a static list) and make membership of that list the requirement for your Smart CTA.

Select an existing CTA that people who meet your requirements will see, or click “Create New” to create a new CTA.

Select an existing CTA that people who DO NOT meet your requirements will see, or click “Create New” to create a new CTA. Note: one of the trickier things about creating a personalized experience for your website visitors is that you want to ensure that any contacts who do not meet your personalization requirements will still see relevant content.

If you want to make any changes these rules, click “Edit smart rules,” or click “Add smart rule” to add any additional rules:

Note: if you have a smart CTA which contains several rules, and the person viewing the CTA is a member of more than one list specified in those rules, you can ensure they see the CTA you want them to see by selecting “Edit smart rules” for that smart CTA and reorder the hierarchy. The CTA that appears first will be what anybody who meets the criteria for more than one list will see. This can get somewhat confusing, so please reach out in the comments below if you have a certain CTA that you are working on and have any questions.

By following these steps, you can create CTAs that target specific groups of people and show them the next steps they can take to answer their questions or meet their needs. Next time, we will talk about several use case scenarios for Smart CTAs and the different content decisions that go into each one. In the meantime, if you have any questions about creating smart CTAs for your website visitors, feel free to reach out in the comments below.

About the Author

Katelyn Ahern

As a Project Manager, Katelyn works to strategize aligned inbound marketing game plans for clients and help them turn their website into a conversion machine. She is Inbound Marketing Certified, HubSpot Certified, HubSpot Partner Certified, and she is passionate about delivering the best possible experience for website users to meet their needs.